Abstract
It is almost a half century since Norman McCord made the sort of archival find of which most PhD students can only dream: the complete records of the Anti-Corn Law League. So armed, McCord was able to produce one of the finest accounts of a Victorian pressure group at work, and his researches paved the way for similar studies of the Liberation Society, the temperance reformers, the anti-sabbatarian movement, and a whole host of other early Victorian campaigns. It is probably fair to say, however, that McCord's 1958 book, although a classic, left a lot unsaid about the Anti-Corn Law League. McCord's was an exercise in deflating the reputation of Richard Cobden, John Bright, and their many lieutenants: he criticised the League's tactics and minimised its influence. Over the years it has required the more sympathetic approach of Donald Read (on Cobden and Bright), John Prest (on the League's electoral politics), and Tony Howe (on free trade ideology), to name only the most important contributors, to sweeten the sour verdict on the League left by McCord. So a new history of the League is to be welcomed, especially when it has been undertaken by two experienced social historians of the early Victorian age.
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